Post-event survey questions

Most published question lists in this category are long, and length is the problem they are supposed to solve. Forty questions on a form produces abandonment, not insight. What follows is a menu of forty-two, grouped by purpose, from which you should pick around a dozen.

The test for every question is the same, and it is strict: name the decision this answer will change. If you cannot, cut it. A question that produces a number nobody acts on has a real cost, because it spends attention you needed for the question that mattered.

The three-minute rule

Put the completion time in the first line of the email and in the first line of the form, and honour it. Twelve short questions is roughly three minutes. Every question beyond that trades completion rate for data, and the trade gets worse as you go.

Two other mechanics decide more than the wording ever will:

• Timing. Overall survey within 24 hours, once. Session feedback during the event, in the app, at the end of each session.
• Reciprocity. The single most effective way to raise next year’s response rate is to publish what you changed because of this year’s answers. “You asked for longer breaks. Breaks are now 25 minutes.” Say it in the opening session and in the survey email.

Core questions — use most of these

These twelve form a complete survey on their own. If you copy nothing else, copy this block.

1. Overall, how would you rate the event? (1–5)
2. How likely are you to recommend this event to a colleague? (0–10)
3. What is the main reason for that score? (open)
4. What was the single best thing about the event? (open)
5. What one thing would you change? (open)
6. Did the event meet the expectations set by the programme? (Exceeded / Met / Fell short)
7. How would you rate the quality of the sessions overall? (1–5)
8. How would you rate the venue? (1–5)
9. How would you rate the food and breaks? (1–5)
10. How useful were the networking opportunities? (1–5 / Did not use)
11. Would you attend again next year? (Yes / No / Depends)
12. Is there anything else you want us to know? (open)

Question 5 is the highest-value question on the list, and it works because it asks for one thing. “What would you change?” produces a shrug; “what one thing” produces a specific answer you can act on.

Content and programme

Use these when next year’s programme is genuinely open.

13. Which session was most valuable to you, and why? (open)
14. Which topics do you want more of next year? (multi-select from your track list)
15. Which topics could we drop? (multi-select)
16. Were the sessions pitched at the right level? (Too basic / About right / Too advanced)
17. Was there enough time for questions in sessions? (Yes / No)
18. How would you rate the keynote? (1–5)
19. Did you attend a workshop? If so, was the group size right? (Too small / Right / Too large)
20. How many sessions did you attend? (0–2 / 3–5 / 6–9 / 10+)

Question 20 is more useful than it looks. Cross it with overall satisfaction and you learn whether your programme rewards attendance or exhausts it.

Logistics and venue

21. How easy was it to find the venue? (1–5)
22. How easy was it to navigate inside the venue? (1–5)
23. Was registration and check-in smooth? (1–5)
24. Were the session rooms the right size? (Too small / Right / Too large)
25. How would you rate the audio and visuals? (1–5)
26. Was the Wi-Fi adequate for what you needed? (Yes / No / Did not use)
27. Were breaks long enough? (Too short / Right / Too long)
28. Did you have any accessibility needs that were not met? (open)

Question 28 belongs on every survey and is left off most. Ask it plainly, keep the answer private, and read every response yourself.

Networking and community

29. How many new people did you meet? (0 / 1–3 / 4–10 / more than 10)
30. Did you make a connection you expect to follow up on? (Yes / No)
31. Which format helped you meet people most? (Breaks / Meals / Structured networking / Sessions / The app)
32. Was there enough unstructured time? (Too little / Right / Too much)
33. Did you use the attendee directory? (Yes / No / Did not know it existed)

Question 33 measures discovery, not value, and the “did not know” option is the point. If a third of respondents pick it, you have a communication problem rather than a product one.

The app and communications

34. Did you use the event app? (Yes / No)
35. If not, why not? (open)
36. How useful was the app during the event? (1–5)
37. Which part of the app did you use most? (Schedule / My agenda / Directory / Q&A / Photos / Announcements)
38. Were notifications useful or intrusive? (Useful / About right / Too many)
39. Was the schedule accurate and current? (Yes / Mostly / No)

Question 38 is worth asking every year, because notification tolerance is specific to your audience and you will over-send before you under-send.

Commercial and sponsors

Ask these only if you will act on them; they are the questions most often collected and least often used.

40. Did you visit the sponsor area? (Yes / No)
41. Was the sponsor presence well judged? (Too little / About right / Too much)
42. Would this event be worth its ticket price to you again? (Yes / No / At a lower price)

Question 42 is uncomfortable and valuable. Ask it once, in the last block, and read the answers before you set next year’s price.

Question types, and when each is wrong

Type	Good for	Fails when
1–5 rating	Comparing the same thing year over year	Used for anything you cannot compare
0–10 recommendation	One headline number	Treated as a verdict without the follow-up
Yes / No	Facts about behaviour	Applied to opinions, which are rarely binary
Multi-select	Topic preference, format preference	The list is your list, so it cannot surface what you did not think of
Open text	Everything you did not anticipate	You have more than three of them, or nobody reads them
Matrix grid	Nothing on a phone	Always, on a phone. Do not use one

Two hard rules. Never use a matrix grid, because most of your responses arrive on a phone and grids are close to unusable there. Never make a question required except the first one, because a required question mid-form converts a partial response into no response at all.

Session feedback is a different instrument

The most useful feedback at any conference is session-level, and it does not belong in the post-event survey. By the time the survey arrives, an attendee remembers roughly two sessions clearly and rates the rest from a general mood.

Ask in the room, at the end of the session, in the app:

• One rating, 1–5.
• One optional open field: “anything the speaker should know?”
• Nothing else.

Two questions, ten seconds, while the room is still emptying. That is what produces per-session data you can hand a speaker.

In event67 this is built in: attendees rate a session and can send a suggestion straight to the organizer from the session screen, and free-text feedback is routed to the organizer rather than published to the room. The two instruments then complement each other — session ratings tell you which talks worked, the post-event survey tells you whether the event worked.

Reading the results without fooling yourself

Response bias is real and predictable. The people who fill in your survey are the ones who enjoyed the event and the ones who had a specific bad experience. The middle is under-represented. Read the numbers as a floor and a ceiling rather than an average.

Read every free-text answer yourself. All of them, personally, once. Do not delegate this and do not skim a word cloud. The single most useful sentence in a survey is almost always in a free-text box and is almost never in the summary.

Compare to yourself. Your rating this year against your rating last year is meaningful. Your rating against a published industry benchmark is not, because you do not know what was measured or how.

Segment by one thing. First-time attendees against returning ones tells you more than any other split, because the two groups experienced different events. If you ask nothing else demographic, ask “is this your first time?”.

Act on three things. Pick three changes, make them, and announce them at next year’s opening session. A survey that changes nothing teaches your attendees not to fill in the next one.